A physician believes the Biden administration missed the mark on COVID-19 testing.
During an interview, CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins asked Brown University School of Public Health Dean Dr. Ashish K. Jha about the administration’s approach to testing.
“You saw President Biden yesterday acknowledging, pretty bluntly, that they need to do better when it comes to testing because we are seeing this nationwide shortage of those rapid at-home tests. It’s very difficult to just walk into a store and get one,” Collins said.
She continued, “And what we’re hearing from officials like Dr. Fauci is that they believe they’re gonna have this solved by mid-January, in a few weeks. But, how critical is the window that we’re missing right now for testing?”
Jha explained, “Oh I think it’s incredibly critical, and I cannot believe this is where we are almost two years into the pandemic. Everybody saw it coming. We knew we needed more tests. I think the administration dropped the ball on this.”
He noted the administration focuses a significant amount of attention on vaccines, adding, “Which is terrific. Vaccines are a really, really important part of this but did not pay enough attention to testing.”
Watch the video below:
Dr. @ashishkjha applauded the CDC's shortened isolation recommendation but says there is a distinction for the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
— New Day (@NewDay) December 28, 2021
"When [vaccinated people] have a breakthrough infection, they shed for much shorter period of time. So this is really reasonable for" them pic.twitter.com/73PCH0tNTp
During a weekly virtual meeting between state leaders and members of his Covid-19 response team, the president acknowledged that not enough has been done to expand testing capacity.
“It’s not enough. It’s clearly not enough. If we’d have known, we’d have gone harder, quicker if we could have,” he said.
ABC “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir recently asked Biden about testing.
“We’re nearly two years into this pandemic, you’re a year into the presidency, empty shelves and no test kits in some places three days before Christmas when it’s so important,” Muir said.
He asked Biden, “Is that good enough?”
“No, nothing’s been good enough,” Biden replied.
He continued, “But look, look where we are. When last Christmas, we were in a situation where we had significantly fewer vaccinated — people vaccinated, emergency rooms were filled. You had serious backups in hospitals that were causing great difficulties. We’re in a situation now where we have 200 million people fully vaccinated. Two hundred million people fully vaccinated. And we have more than that who have had one shot, at least one shot. And they’re getting these booster shots as well.”
The federal government announced next month it would mail at-home test kits for free to any U.S. household that asks for one.
